


And The Truth Will Set Thee Free

by avislightwing



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: GIVE ME BAMF MOR GDI SJM, Gen, It's not really angst, Who Runs the World? GIRLS, except i'm really not, im so sorry, okay sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 12:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: A war needs to be won. Their power must be unleashed. When the going gets tough...





	And The Truth Will Set Thee Free

It had finally happened.

Their armies had fallen. Cassian and Azriel were dead. She knew by the truth that soaked her bones and laid bitter on her tongue that in the end, it had been inevitable. That they’d faced Hybern, and Cassian had died in Azriel’s arms, hazel eyes going dark. She’d heard the truth of Azriel’s scream, the way he laid waste to all those around him, shadows tearing through them all – tearing him apart.

It was odd, really. They’d imagined this scenario, she and Rhys. But they’d always assumed that he’d be around to call her in.

They were dead as well, though, her High Lady and High Lord both. The other women had brought them in, Elain sobbing as if her heart would break, Nesta rigid and face contorted with numb pain, Amren’s silver eyes dull.

They’d shredded Rhys’s wings before they killed him. She’d make them pay for that.

It was time.

 

Mor looked around the room with weary eyes. There were only the four of them left. Grieving, broken, and the only thing keeping Hybern from enslaving the human realm.

“We have to keep fighting.” Amren’s voice was fire and smoke, shredded by the death-throe magic of Beron and his sons. “We have to.”

“What for?” Nesta, in contrast to the rest of them, was immaculate in her fighting leathers. Her face was an effigy of alabaster. Since she’d carried her sister’s broken corpse into Velaris, spattered with blood and with her clothes in tatters, it was like she’d petrified. Mor suspected that Cassian’s death hadn’t helped. “For the sliver of land south of Prythian? Let them burn. We’ve given enough; sacrificed enough.”

Amren let out a savage snarl. “I’m not going home until we win – which means we have to win.”

“There are still innocents to save,” Mor said firmly. “We keep fighting until we kill Hybern or die trying.”

“I don’t know, Mor. Maybe Nesta’s right.” Elain lifted dull brown eyes to meet Mor’s, shoulders hunched. Elain had not fared well in this war of blood and sorrow. They didn’t know what had become of Graysen – hadn’t dared breach the Wall to find out – and then just weeks after Feyre’s midnight escape from the Spring Court, Mor found her huddled in a corner of her room, tears running down her face.

“He’s dead,” she had told Mor, eyes wild and desolate as the Sacred Mountain. “He’s dead…”

“Who’s dead?” Mor had asked urgently.

“My mate,” Elain had whimpered.

The news had come in a few days later, courtesy of Azriel’s spies:  Hybern had decided Spring needed to fall for him to be able to properly annihilate the mortal lands. He’d taken Tamlin with him, thinking him useful, but no one else – including Lucien. Mor could see the sprawled, broken figure in the ruins of a once-proud mansion, lying on a carpet of blood-drenched roses.

Not that it had mattered much. Tamlin was dead by now as well. They’d found his body on the battlefield, face still twisted in rage.

It had broken something in Elain, Lucien’s death. She had barely begun to recover when she had received the blow of the death of her sister, and then that of her best friend; Azriel had been the one to hold her together following the loss of her mate.

“No,” Mor said fiercely. “Elain, we can’t let them have died in vain.”

She thought she saw a wisp of shadow curl around Elain’s wrist. “How?” Elain said in a choked voice. “How can we hope to win when they couldn’t?”

Mor looked around the room:  a monster, a commander, a shadow.

And her. A queen.

“First thing’s first.” Mor gave a vicious grin that showed every one of her teeth. “We need to find a priestess.”

 

When Mor visited the Court of Nightmares a day later, it was as High Lady of the Night Court.

She took all of them with her. She knew how this would look; how she would be challenged. And she had to be prepared to back it up.

Amren took Mor’s old role, strolling into the throne room before any of them, calling for those gathered to kneel for the arrival of their new High Lady in the cold, cruel way she did so well.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” Elain was as pale as a ghost. Mor’s suspicion from before was right; here, in a place of demons and darkness, the shadows that used to come at Azriel’s call now darken their flowergirl, twitching at her hair and curling around her neck as if unsure whether to strangle or caress.

“You can,” Mor said with soft, even conviction. “Look at me.” Then, as Elain didn’t, “ _Look_ at me, Elain.”

Hesitantly, Elain tipped her chin up enough to meet Mor’s eyes.

“Good. Now listen to me.” She waited until Elain was entirely focused on her. “You have lost your home, your humanity. You have lost love thrice over. _And you are still alive._ ”

Mor had been afraid Elain was right – that she was too far gone – but then she heard the truth in her own voice, tasted it like sour wine on her tongue. And saw something ignite in Elain’s eyes – a dark fire.

Mor smiled, the cruel, merciless smile she was calling for Elain to mirror. “You have survived years of starvation, dying and being brought back to life, the slaughter of your mate. Things the Fae in there could never dream of. You are strong, Elain. And you are dangerous.” She paused. “You need to be.”

The shadows stopped swirling around Elain and wisped to her side, clinging to her like a second skin for a moment. By the time they disappeared, Elain’s back was straighter, and the dark fire Mor had seen spark a moment ago was a bright flame – for now, at least.

Mor turned to Nesta, but she didn’t need to give out any words of encouragement there. With the fierce Illyrian blade strapped to her back and the topaz Siphons clinging to her body, the shorn hair and the gleaming wings, the head held high and grey-blue eyes flashing, Mor had no doubts about Nesta’s ability to scare the shit out of every person in that room.

“Showtime,” she murmured, turning to face the gates.

Nesta and Elain entered first. If Mor closed her eyes, she could see them, even as her nostrils flared at the scents of fear and disgust:  so much more similar than Cassian and Azriel, they were clearly siblings, but that’s where the similarities ended. Nesta was every inch a honed warrior, proud and tall and ready to rip the skin off anyone who would come too close to her High Lady. Each step even, each step measured, her eyes of ice took in every person lining the path, and told them each, _You. Your time is up._

Elain, on the other hand, practically drifted into the room, as silent and sinister as the shadows that trailed in her wake. She was a waif – a ghost – a breath-catching demon who seemed like she could drift into your nose and mouth and suffocate you from the inside out until shadow trailed from your lips and you fell twitching to the floor.

And then it was Mor’s turn.

She wore precisely what Rhys had worn the last time he visited. The fine clothes hugged her body as they had his, though instead of swirling tattoos, the deep V of the tunic showed the curve of her breasts.

High Lady, not High Lord, and not afraid to show it.

Her footsteps did not echo as Rhys’s had. They did not need to. She strode through the crowd of bent heads, mounted the stairs, and sank onto that throne of dark stone that had been her cousin’s for so long.

She mourned him – she likely would until the end of her days. But today was not a day to show the weakness of grief. Today was a day of power.

Mor glanced to her sides. There knelt Nesta, her right hand, and Elain, her left. Amren stood behind her throne, her head bent in a deference Mor knew she would show no one else in this world.

“Rise,” she said, her voice echoing through the chamber. As one, her court got to their feet. She was almost surprised; she had been expecting more pushback.

“Daughter. How… pleasant to see you again.”

She should’ve known from whom it would come.

Mor stroked the arm of her throne lightly, tilting her head. “Keir,” she said, and the name burned in her mouth.

He went to the foot of the dais, a cold sneer on his face. He had bowed, yes, but Mor knew he hadn’t meant it. She didn’t need her bones and blood to tell her. She knew from her life, from his cruelty.

“You will not call me daughter again,” Mor said, her voice quiet and deadly. “You will refer to me as _High Lady_ or _The Morrigan_. Nothing else. Is that understood?”

“I do not fear you,” Keir snarled. “Rhysand and his Circle, for all their power, have fallen. You are but a bare echo of what he was, and your courtiers –” He glanced from her right to her left, and spat on the ground. “ _That_ is what I think of your rule. You are no Lady of mine.”

Mor drew in breath to condemn him, to pronounce his punishment, but before she could, a thin thread of voice wound through the room.

“You will not speak of my High Lady like that.”

And Elain – frail Elain, clothed in darkness and grief and wearing it like armor – drifted forward to stand before Mor’s father.

He laughed, the sound cold and cruel. “And what will you do about it, girl?” he said in scorn. “Think you to take the place of the shadowsinger?”

“I would never dream to take Azriel’s place,” Elain said, and the sweetness of her voice sent a shiver of foreboding along Mor’s spine. “For this place is my own, not his. The Morrigan is High Lady, and you will respect her as such, or I will be…” She pondered for a moment. “Or I will be very unhappy with you,” she decided on, a faint smile on her lips.

“Oh, my. I wouldn’t want to make you _unhappy_ ,” Keir snarled, advancing another step. “Neither you nor your sister have the power of the Illyrians, and now that they’re gone, mark my words, I will –”

But he didn’t get a chance to tell them what he would do, because at that moment, his voice stuttered, and he went silent. His eyes widened, and Mor saw it then:  a thread of shadow trickling into his mouth.

Mor sensed Nesta tense, saw her start to move forward, but she raised a single finger, and Nesta froze. Mor wanted to see what Elain would do.

“You will what?” Elain asked, and there was a shadow-honed edge to her sweetness now. “I don’t think I heard that. Would you mind repeating it?”

Keir let out a strangled sound and clutched at his throat, falling to his knees.

Elain’s smile widened slightly. “That’s better,” she crooned, then looked back at Mor. “My Lady?”

Mor studied her father – the gold hair which was so like her own damp with sweat, his eyes like old soil. They reminded her of Elain’s, somehow, but she knew that Keir’s had not been made cruel and cold by hardship. They had always been that way. “I will tell you this once, and once only,” she said, voice soft and deadly. “You will bow to my rule, or you will die, and someone else will take your place.” She flicked a hand at Elain, and the shadows unwound from Keir’s throat and slipped back to Elain, who retreated to Mor’s side.

Keir’s breathing was ragged, his eyes full of hate, but he stayed on his knees. “Understood,” he breathed.

“You will lend your warriors to me,” Mor said. “They will be commanded by Nesta.” She nodded at the woman to her right. “Believe me, Keir – you should be grateful. Hybern will not stop at razing the territories of his enemies. Have you not heard of the fate of the Spring Court? Unless Hybern has use for you, he will lay waste to this entire city. And, believe it or not, I do not wish for that to happen.” She leaned forward slightly. “For centuries, Rhysand gave me freedom to decide when you would die. I do not need his permission any longer. Give me one good reason why I should not have my commander and shadowsinger rip you limb from limb.”

“To change rulers in such a time would destabilize the Court of Nightmares beyond repair,” Keir rasped. “My warriors will obey me without question. They may not do so for – for whoever would succeed me.”

Mor considered that, tapping her fingers on the throne. She knew that at a single word from her, Nesta would step forward and eviscerate Keir with that blade strapped down her spine – and she was very, very tempted to let her do it. More tempted than she had ever been in the centuries she’d been alive.

But they needed to win the war first.

 “You shall keep your rule and your life – for now,” Mor pronounced. She thought she heard Nesta give a soft huff of disappointment. “That is, assuming that you follow through on obeying my orders. If not…”

Keir nodded several times. “I understand.”

“You understand… what?”

He ground his teeth. “I understand… High Lady,” he said, bowing almost to the floor.

“That’s better,” Mor said. Her smile contained no real joy – just vicious satisfaction and triumph. She stood, and the court fell to its knees once more. “I expect troops to be amassed within two days,” she told the room at large. “Should that not happen, I will be returning, and you won’t have made only Elain unhappy, but all four of us. And believe me –” Her smile widened slightly. “– you will not enjoy that at all.” She slowly stepped off the dais, strolled past her kneeling father without even a glance. And her new Inner Circle – the Ladies of the Night Court – followed her.

This time she let her footsteps echo.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh I wanted to write more of this but idk how to plot
> 
> also you get a lameass summary because I hate giving ANYTHING away before you read it haha
> 
> Join me on tumblr at birdiethebibiolphile!


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